← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 12314 | Posts: 26 | Started: 2004-02-13
2004-02-13 22:12 | User Profile
Though a few of you would doubtless rename this thread "Traitor's Gate".
Now, it's no surprise that I am what is commonly known as a 'racist'. However, that said, I have absolutely no problem with stating that there are many Jews, blacks, Asians, etc that I have admired unreservedly and whose contributions to the world I am even grateful for. And by that I don't mean people like Shamir and Kminta who will deal with their own ingroup honestly and even ruthlessly - though of course I do admire them for that - but in more general terms. In other words, I'm not referring to perceived or potential [I]allies [/I] in a racial-struggle sense, but individuals besides op-ed writers and polemicists (though of course you're free to include them).
And I guess in a sense I'm starting this thread because I didn't start out thinking the way I now do. I came around to racialism with great reluctance and even a little heartache when I could no longer close my eyes to the sorts of inescapable inevitabilities that are no one [I]individual's [/I] fault but written in the sand and stars as the nature and destiny of mankind. Survival - of our people and our civilization - must trump the secondary matters of one's personal likes and dislikes. I have written some pretty extreme things in my long weekend here at OD, and some of them have given me pause afterwards, but neither I nor any other white person has the right to cast our future generations into the outer darkness just so I can pat myself on the back and think, [I]I'm really a good person[/I]. Now that we [I]know [/I] what's coming, we may not be able to stop it, but we cannot & must not [I]aid [/I] it in coming. I'm hip to all that.
But I'm not going to dumb [I]myself [/I] down and pretend I monolithically despise every individual in a group, regardless of their individual merits. And I doubt the other regulars here do either. So this is a thread in which you are asked to honestly pay tribute to those members among our racial foes whom you genuinely admire. I expect some contentious moments, but I think this will be one of our most interesting threads. (If I don't get booed off the stage, that is.)
2004-02-13 22:26 | User Profile
Eh, Seinfeld?
2004-02-13 22:39 | User Profile
The easiest place for me to start is music, specifically Jazz.
Miles Davis - I admire his music only. "Kind of Blue" is a wonderful album, probably my favorite Jazz recording.
Keith Jarrett - I know nothing about him, but love his music.
Both men understand that silence is as valid an idea as tone, and can double a musician's vocabulary if properly employed. This is lost on many white musicians, and listeners too, for that matter.
Lately I'm blind with hatred regarding the IP. After seeing Karmazin before Congress, claiming he and other IP execs were "shocked, outraged, and embarrassed" over Ms. Jacksons teat...well...bum rush 'em. Push them all into the f***in ocean!
Arabs - lately I admire them, and feel as though we're on the same team. This is partly a reflexive respons to go 180 degrees from what the TV (the O.E.J.) tells me to think.
2004-02-13 22:44 | User Profile
Since at least Sun Yat-Sen, China produces the best nationalists. Which is why some of us despise the international banker-industrial cartels for building them up so much in the last generation or so. When China has the upper hand there will be pure hell to pay. Thay have no tradition of fair play and seem to hate anybody that does.
The late Chow En-Lai got in the best gag, so far as I know. A dippy US politician was trying to make points about Chinese dissidents and about how China should allow Chinese free right to emmigrate from the Mainland. So Chow says, "Sure, President Carter, let's start with 20 or 30 million Chinese immigrants to America, shall we?"
Jimmy shut up after that. :)
Seriously: The continuing rise of Asia is going to shut the globalists up but good. China is just the biggest bastard on the block; they're all just using Western universalism to boot up their ability to squash us.
2004-02-13 23:04 | User Profile
Have never posted to any political forum save this one [barring dipping a big toe -twice! -into the brackish waters at the VNN forum]. I.e., it had to've been posted here. I recall it but not well enough to point you to where it might be - I don't keep sync-copies of any of my posts, so the best I can tell you is to rummage around this site and eventually it'll show up. Sorry.
Am culling together my own list of Distinguished Opponents, which I will post shortly.
2004-02-14 01:29 | User Profile
Stanley Kubrick Miles Davis Marvin Gaye Buena Vista Social Club Yo-Yo Ma Indian Food Thai Food Mendelssohn Islam
There's certain aspects that I respect of individuals and cultures of the non-White races. Actually, I wish them all the best while living in their own lands, but living in the same country, same neighboorhood, same workplace and same bed is a whole other thing. Intolerable? God made the nations of the world and scattered them just right. That is, until man decided to become 'god' and f*cked it all up.
2004-02-14 10:18 | User Profile
Wintermute: Brilliant. I agree with nearly all of them.
I should say that I'm not, strictly speaking, a racist. Racism is simply a component of nationalism, which of course is one of the pillars of Catholic social thought. Celebrating diversity means that each nation must keep its culture strong, its bloodlines pure, and its national sovereigty safe. Thus, I wish all well, and admire none more than the great nationalists of all nations. Ho Chi Mihn, General Giap and the great Vietnamese people, for example, who endured unspeakable hardship in defending their Vietnamese culture, bloodlines and territory free of the multicultural foreign imperialist invaders, be they Chinese, French, Japanese or Americans. Good for them. Same with the Irish freedom fighter Michael Collins, the Chinese Sun Yat Sen, and of course our very own George Washington.
Death to the imperialists! Up the Republic!
Christian Nationalism is a live and let live sort of thing. For example, I heartily wish my African brothers in Christ in Ethiopia ver well inideed. May their Amharic language, Coptic Faith, and territorial sovereignty endure forever. Just don't immigrate here, and we'll all be fine. You know?
Unlike you, I like some jazz, though. Especially the Big Band stuff. Swing rules. Duke Ellington, Count Bassie, and of course the Jews who made them what they were!
Ditto on the Chinese, whom I admire greatly. The Overseas Chinese are a very powerful group, who I think haven't crossed paths yet directly with the Tribe. They will some day, and it may well turn out that the Tribe will have met its match.
Lee Kwan Yu, IMHO, will go down as one of the great leaders of the 20th century. At least, his influence will echo down the centuries far more than that of Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. He was the one who found a uniquely Chinese way of economic development, and turned his theories into the astonishing (if not a tad dull) success called Singapore. The burgeoning Shangai is modeled on Harry Lee's magnificent vision, and 1.2 billion Chinese are following his model to world dominance. A great man, and a true visionary.
Lao Tzu was one of the great mystics of all time, and he conveys well his real contact with the Eternal. The Tao that can be spoken is indeed not the eternal Tao. So I'll shut up on that point.
Ditto on Harold Bloom, who can be a tad verbose but whose heart is in the right place. Any 20th century Jew who proclaims the absolute primacy of the esthetic is a friend of mine. Ditto likewise on the pagan Camille Paglia, who like you is much more of a Catholic than either of you would care to admit.
The Buddha was an Aryan cousin, of course, but also the author of one of the most beautiful constructs ever made. Nobody can view the towering achievements of Buddhist civilization and fail to admire the noble vision that begat it. The Buddha's vision of an absolute and unbending compassion (literally, to suffer with) all life humbles me. All life is suffering, my friends, but the Buddha teaches us that prayer can make suffering bearable, even joyful. Amen to that.
Our Aryan cousins in India also came up with the first scientific grammar wrtten a couple thousand years ago by a fellow named Pannini. This man set the stage for all that came after in linguistics.
I admire the Jews, but understand that as St. Paul said God made them enemies of the Gospel for our sake. So, understand that they're enemies, but don't hold them too much to account, for it is only by their enmity that we were given the Light of Christ. (It's in Romans). Ditto that St. Paul's letters (especially Romans) are the cornerstone of the Christian West. Romans was the direct cause of the wars of the Reformation. And as St. Peter tells us, St. Paul is indeed hard to understand. So, take it from the big dumb Fisherman and take a deep breath and relax - there's no use fighting any more wars of his Letter to the Romans.
No doubt, though, that it's Europe and the rest. The white race is, as a simple matter of historical record, the creator, the innovator, the giver of laws and values. The world would do well to acknowledge this obvious fact (as the Charles Murray has done recently) and stop the anti-white hatred and attempts on our racial existence.
We nationalists truly are the ones who celebrate diversity.
Walter
2004-02-14 19:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ragnar]Since at least Sun Yat-Sen, China produces the best nationalists. Which is why some of us despise the international banker-industrial cartels for building them up so much in the last generation or so. [COLOR=Red]When China has the upper hand there will be pure hell to pay[/COLOR]. Thay have no tradition of fair play and seem to hate anybody that does.[QUOTE][I second that in red.][/QUOTE]
The late Chow En-Lai got in the best gag, so far as I know. A dippy US politician was trying to make points about Chinese dissidents and about how China should allow Chinese free right to emmigrate from the Mainland. So Chow says, "Sure, President Carter, let's start with 20 or 30 million Chinese immigrants to America, shall we?"[COLOR=Red][I believe it was Teng, not Chou][/COLOR]
Jimmy shut up after that. :)
Seriously: The continuing rise of Asia is going to shut the globalists up but good. China is just the biggest bastard on the block; they're all just using Western universalism to boot up their ability to squash us.[/QUOTE]Well stated.
2004-02-14 20:33 | User Profile
Doug Pinnick - wrote, played and sang on an album that helped change my life way back when and still just rocks my socks off every time I revisit it: [url=http://www.kingsx.net/band/albums/fhl.html]Faith Hope Love[/url]
"Listen to me very closely -- There is more heaven than hell"
:punk:
I'll always be grateful for that.
2004-02-15 03:21 | User Profile
Jesus is my favorite Jew, Groucho would be number two.
Malcolm X, my favorite black, Charley Patton would be his back.
Chuang Tzu's top of the Chinese pile, Or maybe Lao Tzu and Confucius for awhile.
Buddha of the India kind, Though Ramanujan had a helluva mind.
The Europeans are too many to rhyme, I'll confess a bias everytime.
2004-02-15 04:44 | User Profile
The handful of blacks I have fond memories of are those I knew as a kid: kindly old Mrs. Fascells, my kindergarten teacher, who was always patient & gentle with a frightened 4 year-old boy; Mr. Scott, a high school shop teacher, and a genuinely nice man. He overheard me call him a nigger after he scolded me for some trifle, and that's the only time I've regretted using that description. I can still see the hurt look on his face.
Similarly, the only jew I ever really liked was a third grade classmate named Mark Cohen. I remember him as a nice, friendly kid. He was probably my best school pal at the time. Tragically, he was killed in a mysterious fall from the roof of St. Elizabeth's Catholic school, which was across the street from our public one.
2004-02-15 06:49 | User Profile
Jews and Asians are talented, you gotta give em that. Certainly if you're on a gurney, looking up into bright lights and about to say bye-bye to your appendix, I'd sooner have a Goldstein or a Hashimoto looking down at me from behind a surgical mask than a Gupta or a Sanchez or an Al-Faseer. (But I'd settle for 'em if my final option was Dr Bojangles. Scalpel an' whatnot, you knowm sayn?) And - I must shamefacedly admit - if I ever had to [U]sue[/U] anyone.....well...[I]you know[/I].
But enough -! I have crackpot theories to offer here. Number one, blacks.
The sad thing about blacks is they manifest the best that is in them when they are far from any [I]naturally-corrupting [/I] contact with other blacks. If it were made compulsory 50 years ago that every town and city in America had to have one black family living in it - [I]but no more than one [/I] - race would not even be a problem today. Because you know what? I haven't scanned MacDonald on this for verification, but even if he disagreed I still say I'm right: diversity [I]works[/I].... when there's only a small few of 'em around. A town with ten thousand whites and say, five blacks? I guarantee those 10,000 people would be naturally friendly - even protective towards - what would've ceased being perceived as 'unruly savages' and more as a bit of warmly-regarded exotica that lends the daily life in the town a bit of color. If you grew up in an area of the country (long enough ago) where you rarely if ever saw a Negro, I will lay money that you didn't regard them with antipathy or give them much thought of any kind. You most likely thought they were okay. There weren't enough of them around to form a warring tribe, and that's the point. Blacks are dangerous in packs - relatively harmless alone. Only when their numbers swell does the crackling simian synergy cause the natural bestiality inevitably to rise and fan sparks.
Now you're sputtering, "But, Spidey-! That would mean an almost-inevitable tsunami of intermarriage! Are you endorsing black-white couplings? You're not, are you? Because if- [B][I]you ARE? [/I] [/B] Aha! I [I]knew [/I] you were a dirty yid!" (Well, why not, everybody [I]else [/I] has already called me a Jew today.) To you, my answer is: [I]Sure that would mean intermarriage - and do the math.[/I]
Our present condition was arrived at not by Shaniqua blowing her food stamps on grape soda but by Shaniqua having seven kids by five different dusky Democrats. And the whole sebben of [I]them [/I] growing up to have seven apiece, and so on. I'd rather have seen the race isolated and diluted, two progeny per generation, to be further diluted with each succeeding generation. We could eradicate the concept of "nigger" for all time...and what Shecky doesn't want [I]that[/I]? (The whole time all this begattin' is going on, they would most likely be in the best possible environment - among their betters and cutoff from their kind - to actually be the valued productive citizens that everyone who isn't a doctor but plays one on television keeps [I]insisting[/I], at the top of their lungs, that they already are.
As for my list of Notable Nogs: why am [B]I [/B] not surprised that [B]you're [/B] not surprised that it's mostly musicians? Oh, and that OG who invented the comb, of course. So herewith my humble kudos to God for gifting us with Hendrix, Miles Davis & Tony Williams, Ella, Little Milton, Phil Lynott, Curtis Mayfield, Billy Cobham, Stevie Wonder, The Mills Brothers.....kinda one-note monotonous, I know. But pissing against the facades of housing project buildings isn't yet considered a notable Negro accomplishment; though Lord knows, if it [I]was[/I], there ain't enough bandwidth in cyberspace to inscribe all the winners' names on it.
Will weigh in with Jews at another time....
2004-02-15 08:07 | User Profile
Miles Davis was an Ass, who hated Whites.. As for Jazz, white's were it's greatest composer's.. End of my post on this. Do your own home work.. Separation. Those who do not understand are fools to me..
2004-02-15 08:24 | User Profile
MUSIC:
I'm a huge fan of the band Canadian band Rush, especially their stuff from the 70's. Their lead singer/bassist/keyboardist, Geddy Lee (real name: Gary Lee Weinrib), is very much a Jew by birth, although he displays no sign of tribal consciousness in interviews and seems to be an agnostic as far as religion is concerned. While Lee's voice is considered grating by many, I happen to like it for some reason, and his bass playing is universally acknowledged as outstanding.
Then there's Richard Wakeman, keyboardist for Yes throughout much of that band's long history. Although his name is as Jewish-sounding as any, there's the possibility that he had a Jewish father and a Gentile mother. In any case, I've always liked his keyboard work.
The well-known David Lee Roth gets an honorable mention in the "Jews in Music" category, even though he is technically not a Jew, because his father was Jewish. DLR was the perfect singer for Van Halen, and he did some cool solo stuff, too. Additionally, I've read some interviews with him, and he's funny as hell -- I was in stitches after reading some of his remarks.
Now for "Blacks in Music." As a longtime guitar player myself, I greatly admire the work Rocky George did with the metal band Suicidal Tendencies. For those who are not familiar with ST, they were by no means a so-called "rap-metal" band. Their stuff was tough-as-nails heavy, yet melodic and sentimental at the same time. Rocky's leads were fast and technical but filled with searing emotion that fit ST's lyrical subject matter perfectly. For those who like heavy melodic metal, you should pick up, at a bare minimum, the ST albums How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today and the Grammy-nominated Lights...Camera...Revolution as soon as you can.
When the all-Negro band Body Count released their self-titled album after the LA Riots, I bought it because it resonated with my general dislike of police (of any color), particularly those who think they are above the laws they enforce. Contrary to popular belief, Body Count was not a rap album but rather a slab of pure, hard metal with no trace of rap influence, in spite of the fact that rapper Ice-T was the band's singer. Much of the lyrical content on Body Count was juvenile, but there was nothing anti-White on the album (just anti-cop), and the puerility of the lyrics was more than offset by some great guitar riffs and terrific lead guitar playing. I think the lead guitarist's name was "Ernie C" or something like that. He was really, really good.
Although I've always felt that Jimi Hendrix was overrated as a player -- from a technical perspective, he was mediocre at best -- he merits an honorable mention for his willingness to experiment with his leads and think outside the box. He was no slouch when it came to creativity, and he wrote some memorable songs as well.
POLITICS:
Let me begin with a prefatory note. I understand that many people here have problems with libertarianism, at least in its pure form. Nevertheless, I have always been a libertarian at heart, even from a very young age, so libertarian ideas resonate with me and seem self-evident in my view. My present political convictions can perhaps be best described as "White Libertarian Nationalism" -- the view that Whites should have an exclusive nation of their own, but one whose interior government is based on the principles of Jeffersonian libertarianism. I prefer not to think of libertarianism as a Jewish movement, but as a movement inspired by the Whites of the Enlightenment and the American revolution.
Having said all that, it is true that the modern libertarian movement has a number of Jews at its forefront. While I doubt the sincerity of some of those -- namely, those who seem to advocate libertarianism for Americans but tyrannical repression for the Palestinians -- it is difficult for me to hold a cynical view of other libertarian Jews who advocate policies which would necessarily entail the complete cessation of US taxpayer aid to Israel, gun/goy control, "hate speech" laws, anti-discrimination laws, and many other governmental infringements on White freedom. Let it be known, then, that I have no problem with Jews who subscribe to genuine libertarianism, even if I reject certain aspects of their philosophy (mainly the insane "open borders" doctrine). I don't trust them, but I hold no hard feelings toward them if they are sincere.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I admire many Arabs, most notably the Palestinian and Iraqi militants whose raw courage when facing the wrath of the Zionist war machine is as inspiring as can be. Even the children in Arab countries show more courage than most grown men elsewhere. The Arabs exemplify the motto "Death before Dishonor" better than anyone.
Getting back to Jews, I hold the Neturei Karta sect of Orthodox Jews in very high regard for their vehement anti-Zionism. They have even gone so far as to express solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the Zionists heap ridicule and scorn on them as a result. For this reason, the NK are actually more "Christian" than the majority of American Christians, most of whom support Israeli brutality and dominance in the Middle East. Their website is here: [url]http://www.nkusa.org/[/url]
As for Black politicians and/or activists, I can think of only one whom I admire and generally agree with: Prof. Walter Williams of the George Washington University economics department. He is a libertarian who has gone so far as to publicly advocate the secession of certain states from the US to allow freedom-lovers to escape from federal tyranny.
SCIENCE:
There are almost no Blacks of note in the history of science, although there are a tiny number today (maybe 5-10 in the entire USA) who are doing some good work.
In contrast, Jews have made many admirable scientific achievements. My impression, however, is that most of these do not identify strongly with the largerJewish community. Many are even anti-Zionist (e.g., Noam Chomsky of MIT). This is perhaps due to the fact that most of the best scientists are atheists who view any religious justification of Zionism with disdain.
That's all I can think of right now.
2004-02-15 08:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Miles Davis was an Ass, who hated Whites.[/QUOTE] He sure was.
[QUOTE]As for Jazz, white's were it's greatest composer's.[/QUOTE] Not even remotely the point of this thread.
[QUOTE]Those who do not understand are fools to me.[/QUOTE] [I]Exactly.[/I]
2004-02-15 10:28 | User Profile
I've done the tribe; now for The Tribe.
My theory this time is shamefully simple, if not simple-minded. [I]Israel makes everything a thousand times worse.[/I]
I'm not dismissing or minimizing their criminality - or their crimes - occurring [I]before [/I] the founding of the Hate State. I don't maintain they had no influence over our institutions. All's I [I]am[/I] saying is that [I]Israel makes everything a thousand times worse.[/I] Because [I]before that [/I] they had [B]less [/B] influence than they do now, when they permeate every medium of communication including flash cards. Because [I]before that [/I] we at least lived in a West where identifying Jews as Jews was not only legal but [I]de rigeur[/I]. Because the lever that harnessed and hoisted the Jewish unimind was not the Holocaust (which was not even called that until the 60s; nor was it called anything else except "World War 2".) Jews concentrated their purchasing power and Holocaust mind-clouding energies [I]not [/I] on guilt-tripping Joe Sixpack who'd just saved their bacon (oh the irony), but [I]Joe Sixpack's elected representative[/I] - and it worked. They got their command headquarters. Their safe haven. The all-important first prerequisite for that World Domination they'd been swindling for 5 millenia to achieve. From the time the Shitty Little was christened the first and most immediate result was that Baruch Banner became the Hulk. Jewish power coalesced, synergized, found it had ten times the power to subvert as a unit than as disparate entities and grew [I]still [/I] bolder from the knowledge. The commonly held lie that the 50s were an era of fascist repression is like the gentile version of the Big Lie. The left, and leftism, made frighteningly rapid progress permeating the shale of society and culture. (The reason the Jews despise the 50s to a man is it was the last decade in which whites put up a struggle to defend their way of life. [I]We resisted [/I] = [I]a decade of fascist repression[/I].)
Hey, the rest writes itself. Look at the speed - the sheer speed! - with which the Western world has deteriorated since 1948, when it was fat with Axis spoils and war profits. Just examine the decline as a snowball rolling downhill picking up speed the farther down it travels, plot the graph (and the math) backwards and the parallel lines should intersect so that The Fall Of Us began just as the first Arabs and Englishmen were being shot, stabbed, garotted and very often blown the hell up by Yahweh's Own in the Holy Land.)
I mean, look around you. Take a step or two back for the full Cinemascope view. Before '48: ours, mostly. Since '48: all theirs. [I]Israel makes everything a thousand times worse.[/I]
It should be no surprise that my favorite Jews mostly predate that point. First, while I'm as sick as anybody else of that "White Christmas" gotcha-analogy they love to trundle out, I'm genuinely grateful to the Tin Pan Alley songwriters. They gave America and the world an incredible body of work that one would have to be a dogmatic dullard or certifiably insane not to respond to. Not just Berlin but Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Warren and Dubin, the Gershwins...Doc Pomus even. "These Foolish Things", "My Funny Valentine", "I Wish I Were in Love Again", "I'll Be Seeing You", "Blue Moon", "I Only Have Eyes For You"; yes, even that blasted "White Christmas" - those songs, and the rest of the American Songbook, will forever be associated with the summit point of American civilization as its original soundtrack....and their mostly-Jew creators, combined with the work of a select few gentiles like Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, collectively made an incredible contribution to our culture.
I must cite a handful of Jewish humorists, cartoonists and justplainwriters of the early 20th century as well. S.J. Perelman - a true belletrist and a comic genius, and required reading for anyone who simply loves the infinite expressive grace of the English language. Dorothy Parker's a half-mock - if that qualifies, she's on this list for sure. The sf author Robert Silverberg - while certainly no visionary on the level of a Vance or a Dick - has always done consistently fine work. A whole coterie of bright, funny, literate screenwriters whom too few even remember: Ben Hecht, Herman Manckiewicz, Samuel Hoffenstein, S.N. Behrman, Samson Raphaelson. More recently, Mark Leyner, who writes the most brilliantly hilarious hyperintelligent satire of our time.
There have actually been few major Jewish comic-strip creators; the newspaper strip, particularly before 1960, was a predominantly gentile phenomenon, as opposed to comic [I]books [/I] which have been closing early on Fridays since they began. (How gentile? There were entire weeks in the old PEANUTS continuities when Schulz would have Linus expounding on Gospel parables. And even now Johnny (B.C.) Hart regularly catches flak for - well, for being a Christian. See below.) But crazy props to Rube Goldberg, Al Capp, Will Eisner (at least for "The Spirit") and especially Harvey Kurtzman, whose work I have been mad for all my life.
The many Jewish scientists and researchers whose work has in some way large or small saved lives, relieved suffering, advanced medicine. Just because I'm too tired to Google any up beyond the few Salks and Ehrlichs whospring to mind at 5am doesn't mean I don't know they're out there. They should be cited, and commended.
The occasional politically-honest Hebrews: Shamir, Gottfried, Finkelstein.
Edward G Robinson. Woody Allen up to [I]Annie Hall[/I]. I dunno, I'm tired. Moe Howard.
Below is a hilarious example of Jewish media gone amok; you might call this "BC meets PC". Look at the shit Johnny Hart has to take just for being a believing Christian trying to draw a simple, hoary three-panel gag. The newspaper-strip is a dead form anyway, has been for half a century now; yet Yehuda won't be satisfied till even the last dwindling embers are fully Semitized. (For [I]their [/I] protection, not yours.)
[QUOTE]http://loper.org/~george/trends/2003/Nov/945.html
"Did Johnny Hart -- the beloved creator of "B.C." and one of the most widely read cartoonists on Earth -- sneak a vulgar defamation of Islam into the comics pages last week?
The question was raised yesterday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, in an e-mail to its membership.
Hart and his syndicate say no -- that a simple, straightforward joke is being misconstrued. That may well be true, but the 73-year-old cartoonist's history of evangelizing his Christian beliefs through his comic cavemen have left many people doubtful.
The cartoon, which appeared Nov. 10 in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide -- including The Washington Post -- shows a caveman entering an outhouse at night, and then saying, from inside, "Is it just me, or does it stink in here?"
The first public questioning of this cartoon arose in a washingtonpost.com chat Tuesday, when a reader noted that the cartoon seemed to make no sense, except metaphorically. The reader noted that the cartoon contained six crescent moons -- three in the sky, and three on the outhouse door -- and wondered if this might have been a veiled slur on the world's 1 billion practicing Muslims.
The CAIR e-mail mentioned the moons, and also noted that Hart had drawn a prominent sound effect -- "SLAM" -- between two frames to accompany the closing of the outhouse door. The SLAM was stacked vertically, in the shape of an I, and could be seen to signify "Islam." The cartoon appeared on the 15th day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
In the past, Hart has gotten into trouble for religious-themed strips -- most notably on one recent Easter Sunday when his strip showed the seven candles of a Jewish menorah being extinguished, one by one, with each image accompanied by one of Jesus Christ's last utterances. As the last flame disappeared, and the words "It is finished" appeared, the menorah became a cross.
Many Jewish readers were outraged, claiming Hart was making the argument that Christianity had extinguished Judaism as a "better" religion. Hart denied it, protesting that the cartoon was intended to honor both religions. To many, his explanation seemed hollow.
Asked about the outhouse strip this week, Hart denied that it was about Islam at all. He said that interpretation stunned him.
"My goodness. That's incredible. That's unbelievable!"
He said it was just a "silly" bathroom joke, wrapped around the cliche "Is it just me, or . . . ?" According to Hart, the joke was about the ambiguous authorship of a bad smell. The SLAM, Hart said, was simply there to show that the caveman had walked into the outhouse. The crescent moons were there to indicate it was nighttime, and because outhouses have crescent moons.
"This comic was in no way intended to be a message against Islam -- subliminal or otherwise," he said. "It would be contradictory to my own faith as a Christian to insult other people's beliefs. If you should have any further silly notions about malicious intent from this quarter, you can save yourself a phone call."
Richard S. Newcombe, the president of Creators Syndicate, said any religious interpretation is "reading too much into it."
Hart, he said, often uses sound effects in his strips, and crescent moons to indicate nighttime. Plus, he has never been at all subtle in his religious strips, Newcombe said; "Why would he suddenly become Hercule Poirot, secretly planting clues?"
A fair question. Maybe because he had never tried anything this incendiary before?
[IMG]http://loper.org/~george/trends/2003/Nov/slam.jpg[/IMG]
Nonsense, Newcombe said. To suggest there was a bigoted hidden message in this strip, he said, would be "race baiting."
"Why is the door slamming? You don't slam an outhouse door."
This is Marshall Blonsky, professor of semiotics at the New School in New York. Blonsky is an expert in the interpretation of signs and symbols. The first thing he said, on seeing the cartoon, is that he didn't get the joke. The second thing he said was that the outhouse is clearly serving some metaphoric purpose: "It represents something that stinks in the world." And the third thing he said was that there was something very puzzling about that SLAM.
"It's inappropriate," he said. "You gently close an outhouse door." One does not ordinarily enter an outhouse in anger or with a melodramatic flourish, he said. One utilizes this particular convenience in as unobtrusive a way as possible.
Blonsky said the cartoon seemed in some way manipulative -- constructed in "a polysemic fashion, to supply multiple meanings that would deliberately evade interpretation." When told of the religious interpretation, he said that in this light, the cartoon suddenly made logical sense. The coincidences were simply too great to ignore, he said.
The Washington Post asked six well-known cartoonists -- all admirers of Johnny Hart -- to look at the strip. Most said they had no idea what the joke was supposed to be. When the religious interpretation was suggested, five of the six thought it was probably right, even given Hart's denial.
"It's highly, overwhelmingly, incontrovertibly suspicious," said Berkeley Breathed, creator of "Bloom County" and the new Sunday-only strip "Opus." "There's no explanation for that gag without Islam. It's meaningless."
"That vertical SLAM is completely unnecessary to whatever surface gag is there," said Jef Mallett, creator of the nationally syndicated cartoon "Frazz." The cartoon would work equally well, and far more efficiently, Mallett said, without the prominent sound effect. "And other than the excuse to add three more crescents, there was no need to set the scene at night. I'll be among the first to complain that the comics are too sterile. But the last thing we need to spice things up is some secret jihad."
Bob Staake, author of "The Complete Book of Humorous Art," an analysis of contemporary cartooning, calls it "as fascinating as it is suspicious. When you dissect it, as a cartoon, it flat-out doesn't work, and you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what it means. But it doesn't take a conspiracy freak to see it as an odd, twisted, inappropriate slam at a quirky religion."
Only Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau demurred.
"We cartoonists are simple folk. We don't write on that cryptic a level. Leave Johnny alone."
It could be argued that Johnny Hart often does write on a cryptic level. He has used symbols ingeniously, particularly when his cartoon is about religion. Once he drew an elegant cartoon decrying the commercialization of Christmas, in which a cross seen through a window turns out to be the ribbon on a giant Christmas present.
Like many cartoon strips, Johnny Hart's "B.C." often has pedestrian, cliched jokes. But every once in a while he shows brilliant moves -- sometimes accompanied by lamentable social insensitivity. Just two days after the SLAM cartoon, he published one in which two prehistoric ants walk out of a cave marked "School of Linguistics." One says to the other, "My dad sells ice machines." And the other ant replies, "Cool." Then the first ant says, "My dad is out of work." And the second ant says, "Bummer."
Hart is revealing both his fascination with wordplay and an old-fashioned disconnect with some societal niceties. He is equating the state of being unemployed with the state of being a "bum." Certainly clever, if politically incorrect.
In analyzing this cartoon, semiotician Blonsky cautions against succumbing to the Intentional Fallacy: In criticism, he says, it is a mistake to give much weight at all to the artist's stated intention. For one thing, it discounts the strength and influence of the unconscious mind, he said. All that matters in artistic criticism, he said, is the effect of the art on its viewers: the way people interpret it. In other words, even if Hart intended no offense, the offense is there.
For non-academics, though, the issue is intent and intent only. If Hart did not intend to slur Islam, then he is absorbing some terribly unfair criticism. But what if he did intend to slur Islam? You need only read the Constitution to conclude that Johnny Hart had every right to express whatever views he has. But was it right to do it subversively, in what would amount to an act of intellectual sabotage?
Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's spokesman, underscored the stealth: "I think the reason there might not have been initial complaints is that it's so cryptic. If you know who the cartoonist is, what he's done in the past, then it becomes clear. Otherwise, it's just an unfunny joke."" (Gene Weingarten, The Washington Post, November 21, 2003)[/QUOTE]
2004-02-16 04:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE]There's definitely something to your theory that in isolation, individual negroes are relatively harmless. You're absolutely right that in towns with only 1-2 colored families, the resident negroes tend not to be troublemakers and are regarded with a live and let live attitude by people.[/QUOTE] This reminds us why negroes cannot build civilizations. Though individual negroes will greatly exceed the racial norm in intelligence, and though Rushton's racial continuum teaches us that negroes are even [I]more [/I] creative than whites (the value of that creativity being lessened by low intelligence), any creation that fosters civilization will simply be torn down by the other members of the community.
2004-02-16 07:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Woody Allen up to Annie Hall. [/QUOTE]
Great thoughts, Ragman.
I think that Israel makes things 1,000 times worse only because it works in conjunction with the diaspora. The problem isn't corporate HQ so much as it is their thieving branch offices around the world. If we could end this disaspora network then Israel would be just another shitty little country teetering on the brink of ideological civil war. And a shitty little country with a burgeoning Negro problem in the form of Ethiopian Falasha Jews, at that. They richly deserve each other.
Actually, in Zionist terms I'm just saying that all Jews should do aliya, and they should do it yesterday. That's nothing that Ariel Sharon or indeed all the great Zionists didn't teach.
Go home, Hymen. Please just go home.
Ditto on the best of Jewish American comic achievements. For example, Allen's early work - before he started taking himself seriously as a new Bergman wannabe - is among the funnies stuff I've ever seen.
My favourite moment: In Sleeper he's masquerading as a robot who's passing this orb around that people got high from. I nearly wet myself when I first saw it 30 years ago, and it's still one of the best pieces of slapstick acting in the history of the cinema, IMHO.
Walter
2004-02-16 08:02 | User Profile
Have a similar warm spot for the scene in LOVE AND DEATH when Woody's regiment is surveying the battle's casualties and the guy next to him points to a corpse and says, "Look, it's Kropotkin - where I come from, he was the village idiot" and Allen rejoins, "So what did you do - place?"
His three volumes collecting his humorous essays are likewise terrific. "Confessions of a Thief" never fails to convulse me:
I had a sister and two brothers. Jenny married money. Not an actual human being - it was a pile of singles.[/QUOTE]
2004-02-17 04:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I think that Israel makes things 1,000 times worse only because it works in conjunction with the diaspora.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure Israel makes things worse. In fact, it may make things [I]better.[/I] All the Tribal energy devoted to manipulating our government to prop up Israel would otherwise be directed to perhaps more destructive projects of tikkun olam.
2004-02-17 04:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE]My favourite moment: In Sleeper he's masquerading as a robot who's passing this orb around that people got high from. I nearly wet myself when I first saw it 30 years ago, and it's still one of the best pieces of slapstick acting in the history of the cinema, IMHO.[/QUOTE] [I]Sleeper [/I] is a favorite of mine as well. [QUOTE]His recent films are all terrible - they're either pretentious attempts at "art film," or else Hollywoodized romance comedies where he tries to boost his audience by recruiting sitcom actors and actresses.[/QUOTE] True, but I was floored by one of his lines from [I]Antz[/I]. His tribe or species was about to go to war with another, when Woody's cowardly character suggested, "Can't we just influence their political process with campaign contributions?"
2004-02-17 07:05 | User Profile
I haven't seen Take the Money & Run for many years, but I remember howling when he transformed into an Orthodox zhid in his jail cell. Then his embarrassed, kvetching parents wearing Groucho noses.......
2004-02-18 20:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=N.B. Forrest]I haven't seen Take the Money & Run for many years, but I remember howling when he transformed into an Orthodox zhid in his jail cell. Then his embarrassed, kvetching parents wearing Groucho noses.......[/QUOTE]
Remember that "incredible hulk" Negro that he was chained to?
So much of the humor is Allen playing the wimpy Brooklyn nebbish on the backrdrop of some very extreme gentiles, white and black. That Negro feller was one extreme example of African physicality, and there was little nebbisher Allen on a chain gang with him.
Many terrible fears were left unstated there, and to great affect.
Walter
2004-02-18 20:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]His three volumes collecting his humorous essays are likewise terrific. "Confessions of a Thief" never fails to convulse me:[/QUOTE]
I remember his 'Story of Job' -
"And the Lord smote Job on the head, and again on the ear.
And the Lord pushed Job through a thick sauce, which made him sticky and vile."
It's kind of embarassing to burst out in uncontrollable laughter, unable to stop, and to have that fact make you laugh even harder...when you're surrounded by strangers on a bus. Very uncomfortable. I learned the hard way to read those essays in the privacy of my own home.
2004-02-19 01:20 | User Profile
I like a lot of R&B music, probably up until the mid 1980's. I also like the vocal harmony/doo-wop music of the '50s and early '60s (which was predominately black and Italian), along with The Platters. I like a lot of '70s disco music as well. As for Jewish singers, I do like a lot of Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand (up until around 1980).
2004-02-19 04:03 | User Profile
Good thread, il ragno.
I've always been a fan of Woody Allen...all the way up to [I]Deconstructing Harry[/I].
The Marx brothers are definitely responsible for some of the greatest films of all time; [I]Duck Soup[/I] reduces me to hysterial fits of laughter.
I don't watch sports much anymore (bread and circuses, ya know?) but Michael Jordan certainly ranks up there as one the most talented athletes of all time. I caught some footage of him from the early 1990s on ESPN a while back...when he goes up for a dunk, it really does look like he's defying the law of gravity.
Plenty of great Indian scientists/mathematicians...Chandrasekar, Ramanjuan, etc, although, of course, the media totally exaggerates the 'brilliance' of Asian whiz-kidz. I go to school with many Asians; they're almost all hard workers of course, but that's because their parents (and Amerikwan culture) expect and push them to succeed, not so with whites.